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well, morning for ME is evening for y'all. But the quotes I found interesting were the following:
“You’re not going to see us hitting homers out of the park right and left,” said their new No. 3 hitter, Milton Bradley, whose career high in homers is 22. “But when you’ve got that kind of speed at the top of the order, you’re going to get more runs when you have guys behind them hitting balls in the gap. I was on a team in ’06, the A’s, that hit into the most double plays in the league and had the lowest batting average, and we went to the A.L.C.S. So offense isn’t necessarily what you need. You need pitching and defense.”
“Whenever I’m back, I’m back,” Bedard said. “Coming back from shoulder, I don’t know. We’ll have to see. You try not to change, but you can only do so much.”
“Two years ago, I played, and I was good,” Bradley said. “I go to Chicago, not good. I’ve been good my whole career. So, obviously, it was something with Chicago, not me.”
He added: “Just no communication. I never hit more than 22 homers in my career, and all of a sudden I get to Chicago and they expect me to hit 30. It doesn’t make sense. History tells you I’m not going to hit that many. Just a lot of things that try to make me a player I’m not.”
“We made the [trade for Bradley] because we were looking for someone to hit in the middle of our lineup,” said Mariners General Manager Jack Zduriencik, who acquired Bradley for pitcher Carlos Silva. “Milton fit that spot. We like what goes on here. We have a lot of faith and trust in Don. He allows players to be who they are, and that’s all we want Milton to do: come here and be a productive player for us, and have fun. That’s the environment we want to create.”
The Bedard quote doesn't inspire confidence, but I'm not jumping off the local bridge about it. He's always curt in interviews, even when he's trying to be team-first. The Bradley quotes really, REALLY caught my eye, and in conjunction with JackZ talking about Don allowing players to be who they are were really telling to me, I'm even more hopeful to see if M.B. can pop an .850+ OPS for us.